Fire in the Hole!

NorthernMommy had cooking duty tonight. (She puts something called Winter Pumpkin Soup on the menu - she's cooking it. NorthernDaddy doesn't do creamy/thick soups.) NorthernDaddy got to play with Toddler while Mommy crafted her soup. Suddenly, Daddy and Toddler's game of chess was interrupted. Well, not really. Yes, they were interrupted, but they weren't playing chess. It was more like a "Launch the Hot Wheels motorcycle through the loop of fire, off the ramp, and into Mommy's Valentine's Day decorations" kind of game. Anyway, they were interrupted by a horrible sound and a scream from NorthernMommy.

Of course, the boys went running to investigate, and what they found was - to put it nicely - was a disaster. Mommy had put scaldingly hot chunky soup into the blender so that she could puree it. When she pushed the button to start the blender, the top blew off and soup went everywhere.

The soup bomb just missed blowing NorthernMommy's hand off, and she wasn't burned too badly. The kitchen didn't fare so well: it looked like a herd of angry buffalo had trampled through. Or, like a Jackson Pollock painting. There was soup on the wall, up under the cabinets, in the coffee pot, on the radio, in the knife block, etc.

Soup everywhere. Go ahead and click the picture to enlarge it and get a better look.

Don't ask why we have two coffee machines. Let's just leave it at 'WE NEED A LOT OF COFFEE!'

NorthernToddler was his normal 'helpful' self as Mommy and Daddy were cleaning up the mess. As NorthernDaddy cleaned and muttered about each new place that he found soup, Toddler stood in the middle of the kitchen and ticked off a list of places that Mommy hadn't hit with soup. "Look! You didn't get the window! You didn't get the candle way over there on the table! Or the front door.."  His list of clean places was quite short.

In NorthernMommy's defense, the soup that survived was very good. It tasted almost like liquid pumpkin pie. (If one dipped a piece of NorthernDaddy's fresh home-made bread into it, it tasted exactly like pumpkin pie.)

The Northerns have also learned the secret to pureeing hot soup: start the blender dry (empty) before adding the hot soup. There will be no explosion. Good to know....